Abraham Lincoln eBook

During the early part of 1862, Lincoln is giving renewed
thought to the great problem of emancipation.
He becomes more and more convinced that the success
of the War calls for definite action on the part of
the administration in the matter of slavery.
He was, as before pointed out, anxious, not only as
a matter of justice to loyal citizens, but on the
ground of the importance of retaining for the national
cause the support of the Border States, to act in
such manner that the loyal citizens of these States
should be exposed to a minimum loss and to the smallest
possible risk of disaffection. In July, 1862,
Lincoln formulated a proposition for compensated emancipation.
It was his idea that the nation should make payment
of an appraised value in freeing the slaves that were
in the ownership of citizens who had remained loyal
to the government. It was his belief that the
funds required would be more than offset by the result
in furthering the progress of the War. The daily
expenditure of the government was at the time averaging
about a million and a half dollars a day, and in 1864
it reached two million dollars a day. If the
War could be shortened a few months, a sufficient amount
of money would be saved to offset a very substantial
payment to loyal citizens for the property rights
in their slaves.

The men of the Border States were, however, still
too bound to the institution of slavery to be prepared
to give their assent to any such plan. Congress
was, naturally, not ready to give support to such a
policy unless it could be made clear that it was satisfactory
to the people most concerned. The result of the
unwise stubbornness in this matter of the loyal citizens
of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maryland was
that they were finally obliged to surrender without
compensation the property control in their slaves.
When the plan for compensated emancipation had failed,
Lincoln decided that the time had come for unconditional
emancipation. In July, 1862, he prepares the
first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.
It was his judgment, which was shared by the majority
of his Cabinet, that the issue of the proclamation
should, however, be deferred until after some substantial
victory by the armies of the North. It was undesirable
to give to such a step the character of an utterance
of despair or even of discouragement. It seemed
evident, however, that the War had brought the country
to the point at which slavery, the essential cause
of the cleavage between the States, must be removed.
The bringing to an end of the national responsibility
for slavery would consolidate national opinion throughout
the States of the North and would also strengthen the
hands of the friends of the Union in England where
the charge had repeatedly been made that the North
was fighting, not against slavery or for freedom of
any kind, but for domination. The proclamation
was held until after the battle of Antietam in September,
1862, and was then issued to take effect on the first